


Tête-à-tête

by bluestalking



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-24
Updated: 2010-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-09 03:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/82423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluestalking/pseuds/bluestalking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[End of Season 2: Clark has identity crises and Lex keeps losing his fiance.] <i>"That's the bad thing I did. I stole your blood." Lex sneers, enunciating carefully. "From Helen's office. To have it analyzed. To find out what you are."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Tête-à-tête

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feverbeats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/gifts).



"Maybe you shouldn't be marrying me," he says.

"Maybe you're right," she answers.

He tries to hold onto her eyes, but she breaks them free, and walks away. Right out the door. It's quite a performance.

So, there goes his plan--smart, gorgeous, well-paid, a savior of humanity. Savior of Lex Luthor, was his plan. It was a good plan, for self-improvement and greater happiness, and it looked good too, and he can't even get himself to feel anything but generally sardonic when she sashays out of the room in a little red dress even her doctor salary wouldn't have bought her.

Lex is shaken when the plan walks out, but his hands are steady. When he tips the vial out of its case, the blood doesn't tremble. It's cold, but it doesn't make Lex feel any colder.

~

He's holding the blood in his hands again when he hears people in the hall. He puts his head around the door, and discovers Helen (he didn't expect to see _her_) and his father. (He didn't expect to see her with _him_.)

His father swoops away like some gallant supervillain, and Helen stands in front of Lex with a look in her eye like a hypodermic, and then in the middle of some threat-laced banter, Lex makes an odd decision.

He wants to tell the truth.

"I don't want us to have secrets," he says. He has to excuse himself mentally, here. Wanting something is not the same as having it, even for a Luthor. Lex can't think of a person in a world he would tell all his secrets to. For that matter, he doesn't know all his own secrets. He couldn't be completely honest if he tried.

Still. He could be honest about this thing.

"I haven't been holding anything back," Helen says waspishly.

"I have," he tells her. At this point he could still turn it into a sycophantic, sentimental plea--_I've never told you how much I really love you_\--and make cow eyes, which he happens to know he is very good at. She'll stalk out of the room with her lip curled up in loathing and disgust, and she won't come back. That might be the smartest choice.

He doesn't make the smart choice. Instead takes out the metal case with the vial inside it, and tells her he ransacked her office.

If there was a chance in hell that this would go smoothly, Lex is in the wrong hell.

"What's so important about this?" Helen wants to know, angry. Still perfectly coiffed. When did she become such a Barbie doll, Lex wonders, playing dress-up with expensive things instead of getting her hands dirty? Some doctor.

She's staring at him, staring at the blood. There's the curled lip.

"I was hoping it would give me the answers I've been looking for," Lex says. He doesn't say Clark's name. He hopes she doesn't ask him, _Answers to what?_

She doesn't. She _does_ disabuse him of the notion that they could be getting married later today. Lex puts on his cow eyes, Helen puts up her lip. Lex puts the blood away.

Helen's walk-outs are really more effective in a suit jacket, Lex thinks, than in a little red number that looks all wrong.

When Helen is gone (and she gets out fast), Lex stands alone in his office and thinks this through. In retrospect, he decides, looking like a suck-up and a coward might have been an okay plan.

~

Lex is not holding the blood when Clark comes barreling Clark-style into his private study.

It's interesting. No one ever gets this _private study_ notion. Not his father, not the Kents, not Helen, not reporters, scientists, lackeys, high school students, or crazy mutant locals. Definitely not Clark.

Clark grins blindingly at him and says, "Where's the tailor? I'm kinda pressed for time today."

Lex lets the pun pass over and says bluntly, "I canceled it."

That cuts down on the beams of joy. Clark looks concerned and distressed. Lex explains, vaguely. He blames his father, and destiny, and hopes Clark will think that's profound enough to leave it alone.

He doesn't, obviously. He's Clark Kent. He's a bigger fucking busybody than his little friend Chloe.

"What did you do?" Clark asks, with the cadence of asking a pet or a toddler. There's no question that Lex has done something; Lex has always done something. That's the implication, anyway. It's an implication that gets under Lex's skin, because whatever he's done in the past, he hasn't done it to Clark. Or, for that matter, since Clark. Since he met Clark, all he's tried to do is fix things. And he's done everything in his power for the Kents.

Clark looks disappointed. Lex looks straight into his face. He has had a bad day. He is dumped, guilty, looking a lot like his father, and now some hick-town high school kid is giving him a look of parental disapproval so strong it could ground coffee.

What right does Clark Kent, he wonders, have to treat him, Lex Luthor--smarter, older, richer, and vastly more experienced in everything but coping with overprotective parents--like a small, bad dog? When it comes to claiming moral high ground, Lex thinks unpleasantly, Clark is second in altitude only to Jonathan Kent. Lex is very, very angry.

He keeps making the choice, and it keeps being the wrong one, but he can't seem to stop. He says, "Well, Clark, I broke into her office and stole your blood."

Clark's disappointed face goes slack.

"What?" he says.

"That's the bad thing I did. I stole your blood." Lex sneers, enunciating carefully. "From Helen's office. To have it analyzed. To find out what you are."

Lex hits the wall before he knows what's happening. He knows he's been punched, but only afterwards, when he's lying slumped on the floor behind his desk. He didn't see it coming, didn't physically see it coming. Practically didn't feel it happening. It hurts, now; he must have hit his back on an edge when he went over the desk. His head is throbbing, too; he only stopped moving when the wall made him.

Before Lex can see clearly, Clark is standing over him.

"I always knew you moved fast," Lex says, catching his breath. He wonders if he should stand up.

Clark resolves that issue. Clark hauls him up by the front of his shirt and knocks him against the wall a few times, for emphasis, maybe. Or just out of fear. Clark always has strong feelings.

"Why would you _do_ that?" Clark is shouting. It's very hard to formulate an answer when you are being shaken off the ground by an unnaturally strong raging farmboy. "You were my _friend_, my _best friend_, and you're--treating me like some science experiment? How could you _do_ that?"

"I'm sorry, that's a secret," Lex says politely, and gets a laugh out before Clark punches him in the face.

Lex puts his hands up, still laughing. He can feel the blood on his chin. It must scare Clark--either the blood or the fact that Lex is acting crazy--because his hands loosen on Lex's collar, and he says, "Lex--"

"I looked myself because you wouldn't tell me," Lex interrupts. "It's because you wouldn't tell me. I gave you everything you wanted, every time you walked into this room and asked for it. I never questioned you. I never asked for favors. And you wouldn't fucking tell me."

"Lex," Clark says again, backing off. His hands are still too close to Lex's throat for Lex to believe it.

"Two years, doing everything I could possibly do to be good enough for you," Lex says. "Good enough for your _parents_. How laughable is that? Me, trying to be _good enough_ for some small-time farmer who's too full of prejudice to see anyone but my father in me no matter what I--"

"Shut up!" Clark shouts. "My dad--"

"Miracles don't grace my door so often I can ignore them, Clark," Lex shouts back. "I've had one. _One._ You and that bridge. You're all I've got, and I just want to know why."

"Maybe you should learn people don't get everything they want!"

"Just stop me," Lex spits back.

Clark doesn't answer. He lets go, and then starts digging through Lex's desk drawers. Lex pushes himself up on his elbows, and catches his breath; he loses it again when Clark pulls out the gun. Of course. What else would Clark have been going for, digging around in Lex's desk? A vial of blood, printouts of some scientific analysis that proves Clark Kent is confusing and addicting? Obviously not. He was going for the gun.

Just stop me.

"Fine. You really wanna know what kind of miracle I am?" Clark demands. His voice is shaking. His hand is shaking, too, which is less than optimal, because the gun is loaded and Clark knows how to take the safety off. Lex is sure of that, because the safety _is_ off.

"Clark," Lex says slowly. He says this instead of what he's thinking, because the answer to Clark's question is always yes. Lex doesn't think Clark would like the answer. Lex doesn't presently wish to say anything Clark won't like.

"_Do you?_" Clark demands, and his hand moves, and Lex flinches. But when he looks up, the butt of the pistol is directed at him.

"Wh--" Lex starts, and then Clark's free hand wraps around Lex's throat and squeezes.

_But you were_ my _friend._ That's Lex's first impulse. The first, most coherent thing he thinks. It's embarrassing--he would have hoped for something less needy. He should be past the reflexive feeling of betrayal by now. But--it's Clark. Clark is his friend. He doesn't have to put the "best" in front of it, because one out of one is best by default.

He has time to think this over once before pain and pure fear take control, and _you were my friend my friend my friend_ is just the background mantra to being sure he's about to die.

He kicks out, punches Clark's shoulders, but Clark doesn't budge. His weight bears down against Lex's throat, unforgiving and unwavering. Like being killed by a machine, with someone's--with _his_ face. Lex's head buzzes and his lungs hurt, and he gasps airlessly. His trachea is being compressed under Clark's weight. It makes Lex feel sick. He doesn't want to die.

Clark presses the gun against Lex's hand. _No,_ Lex wants to say. _No, no, no._ But his vision is blurring and Clark's eyes are boring through him. His whole body is burning without air, and Lex Luthor _doesn't want to die._ He scrabbles for the gun, milliliters of breath squeaking through his throat, feet kicking against the floor.

_Don't_, he tries to say, his fingers finding the trigger, pushing the barrel against Clark's stomach. _Stop_, when Clark's left hand wraps around Lex's throat above the right. Helen looked cheap and overpriced in that dress, and Clark's eyes are somewhere between smoldering volcano and a very cold thing. The world is full of contradictions.

Lex fires.

He flinches, and Clark flinches. But there's something physically, inherently wrong.

Clark isn't falling to the floor wheezing or dead, and there's no blood on Lex's hand. Nothing on his face.

Lex still can't breathe. Clark won't let go.

Lex thinks, _I hallucinated the shot,_ and his finger spasms, and he struggles in Clark's grip, but there's the smell of gunsmoke between him and Clark, and that's not a hallucination. Terror overwhelms everything else. Lex claws at Clark's arm, and it's like fighting steel.

_Let go_, he wants to scream. _Let go, let go!_

Lex fires again, before he knows it, and again, and again until there are no more bullets. Clark won't move. Lex _still can't breathe._

It's a running dream, the kind where the laws of physics stop applying in the middle of your sleep. All the monsters can catch you, but you can't get away.

Clark's face grows darker, and darker, and darker. Lex can barely move. He can feel the blood in his head and the tears in his eyes, but he can't lift his arms to fight. Distantly, Clark says, "Some miracle, huh, Lex?"

And then he lets go, shoves Lex backwards. Lex hits the wall and gets a breath knocked into him. He almost chokes, it hurts so much. He coughs. For a minute he coughs so hard he can't see through the stars.

He's hacking on the carpet, arms shuddering while he tries to hold himself up, and Clark is standing there, not dying or even bleeding. Lex staggers forward on his knees, pulls himself up by the desk. He's staring at the bullet holes in Clark's shirt. He reaches out--he has to know--and Clark doesn't stop him. Lex pops the buttons open without paying attention, staring at where all the fatal wounds should be. There aren't any fatal wounds. There aren't any wounds at all.

"You're not--you're not--"Lex gasps. "I _knew_ it. You're not--"

"Human?" Clark snaps, and backs Lex up against the wall so fast, Lex doesn't know when they moved. His head is spinning in so many directions. At the center of it, there's the spark of victory. _You're right_, it says. _You were_ right _about him._

His hand is on Clark's stomach. He thinks, _You feel more real than me._

Lex blinks, and Clark says, "You're right, Lex, I'm not human. I'm better than human. Isn't that what the cave says?"

"The cave," Lex says. "You said you didn't--"

"I understand the writing," Clark says. "I understand what the cave is about. It's about me. Me, and my father."

"Your father?" says Lex. "Your father's just a normal--"

"My birth father," Clark snaps. "Jor-el. Not Jonathan Kent."

Lex raises an eyebrow. Clark fumes.

"It's my destiny, Lex," he practically spits. "You heard the doctor. This whole world will be mine."

"Don't be ridiculous," Lex says vaguely, between gritted teeth. It's hard to focus--Clark is digging his fingers into Lex's shoulder so hard Lex's knees have gone weak. Lex's hand is still on Clark's stomach. He knows he should move it. There's a difference between how Clark is touching him and how he is touching Clark, and the difference is insurmountable. And dangerous. "You don't know a thing about leadership, Clark," Lex says, curling his fingers. "That's my area of expertise."

"I'm not here to lead," Clark says roughly. "I'm here to conquer."

Something, deep in Lex's gut, shudders. He should have moved his hand.

He raises his eyes to meet Clark's, and there's a flash of heat in them. It's not a metaphor. Lex shakes his head without looking away.

"Where did you come from?" he whispers.

"I came with the meteor shower," Clark tells him savagely. "I'm the reason you grew up a freak."

That hurts unexpectedly--not the truth, which he suspected. Just the word _freak_.

_I'm not a freak,_ he doesn't say. He says, "If I am a freak, it's a product of being raised as the son of Lionel Luthor. Don't go lining up for credit."

Clark leans into him, and Lex flinches.

"Jor-el wants me to take everything," Clark says. "I can take a little credit."

"Clever," Lex whispers. Then he swallows, because Clark's eyes are close and angry and eating him up. It gives him the idea that there's something he shouldn't do in this position. He banishes that thought, because the only thing you guarantee by hanging on to doubt is that you won't ever win. He does what he shouldn't.

"Do you think _I'll_ let you take over so easy?" he asks. "Don't forget, I'm a Luthor. You're not the only one who takes what he wants."

"Oh yeah? What does the boy who has everything want?" Clark asks.

It is amazing how imperceptive and _privileged_ you can be when your dad is a small change farmer but you can move at the speed of NASCAR.

It makes Lex angry. He says, "You're not much of a best man, if you can ask me that."

"You're not much of a husband, apparently," Clark says, and that just pushes it one too far. He's half-sure Clark will kill him, and he doesn't care. He shoves Clark backwards against his desk (Clark doesn't stop him, he just looks surprised), and while Clark is still looking surprised, Lex climbs up and hits him. Not once. Over and over. Clark doesn't bleed, he doesn't bruise, Lex isn't a Porsche. The more Clark stares at him without getting hurt, the harder it is to stop.

Clark is looking at Lex with something between anger, pity, and curiosity. None of those things are acceptable. There is nothing Lex can do about that. For a very uncomfortable moment, the situation feels interchangeable with any given encounter with his father. Lex hesitates. Clark grabs his arms, so gently that Lex knows he's being careful—that makes him much angrier—and stands up. He spins them around so Lex's spine is pressed against the edge of the desk. Clark is standing too close when he says, "What the fuck do you want, Lex? It can't be friends, because you run off everyone who tries to get near you."

"The truth," Lex says as a default, because this is not what he wants to hear from Clark Kent.

Clark says, "What for?"

Lex says—

Lex doesn't have an answer.

"A consolation prize," he says finally.

"What?" says Clark. He looks around the mansion like he can't imagine what's missing.

"I don't have anything but money, Clark," Lex snaps. "Don't be completely ignorant. Pitching hay in your barn for a couple hours makes me happier than any given day in this castle. But it doesn't count for much when not even _one person_ trusts me. Including you."

This is an explanation without a connecting point. Lex doesn't know how to express the connection, between not being trusted and needing to know.

"Maybe," says Clark, his eyes steely, "people would trust you if you didn't hide behind the money you hate so much. Face it, you don't own a dozen cars because they're cool. You own them because you can run away that much faster."

Lex curls his lip. "Oh, shut _up_. Don't preach at me like you—"

"You're only going after the truth because you can buy it," Clarks says. He shakes his head. His eyes are cold. "You don't want the truth. It's just the closest you can get to people."

"No," says Lex through his teeth, even though it's right. He specifies. "I don't want _Helen_, and she's the closest I can get to _a_ person."

Clark says, like he's thinking of something Lex doesn't want him to think of, "Why do you want me and Lana to be together?"

Lex answers automatically. "She's my business partner. You're my friend. You should be happy."

"Oh, so we're still friends," Clark says. Or not. Now that Lex knows. Now that Lex has tried to shoot him and beat him bloody and has gotten himself choked half to death.

Lex doesn't answer.

Clark scowls. "Lana is mine," he says, and after a second, Lex starts laughing so hard it hurts.

"Oh right," Lex says. "This is _Kansas_. I almost forgot, you know, with the constant psycho mutants and my giant Scottish castle."

"What?" says Clark.

"I'm not interested in Lana," Lex says. "Thanks but no thanks for _that_ tacit offer."

"Then what?" Clark asks. He doesn't seem to remember that his fists are knitting Lex's shirtsleeves into a permanent new shape. The situation is so usual for Lex Luthor that he almost laughs again. Someone catches his interest and he can't let go, and it's the wrong person, and around the time something could happen, he's bleeding profusely and his object of interest has their hand on the mace. Or, in this case, on _him_.

"It's not that I don't like Lana Lang," he says. "But she's not the girl I'd run my car off a bridge for, if you know what I mean."

Clark's face does a number of things. Lex would find them more amusing if they weren't about him. As it is, Lex waits for Clark to make up his mind about what to say.

"You—_me_?" Clark asks, shifting his grip to Lex's collar. "You can't mean that! You don't—you're not..."

"You're from an _alien planet_," Lex says, "an entirely different species, and you're worried because a guy is into you?"

Clark is breathing hard. He lets go of Lex's collar and backs off a step.

"Oh," he says.

"I understand if it's personal, Clark," Lex says, rubbing his throat. "But really. Someone in your position should afford a little liberality."

"So all this stuff about the meteor rocks," he says.

"It's true. I wanted to know what happened to me." Lex meets Clark's eyes. "Now I know."

"And that's it? That's the only reason you've been doing all this _research_ on one of your best friends?"

Again, "one of" and "friends" are not the right words for the situation. But Lex lets it go without sneering.

"Not all," he says. It makes Clark's face go red.

"You're kind of a stalker, Lex," Clark says unevenly.

Lex thinks about that.

"Well, but I mean well," he says.

"I don't think I," says Clark.

"I know that," Lex tells him. He sits down against the desk and shuts his eyes, head back. "Sorry I stole your blood. And shot you."

"Don't marry Helen," Clark says strangely.

Lex laughs. "Don't worry," he says.

"You can't let anyone know about me."

"Clark," he says. "Everyone who could possibly want to know hates me. And even if they didn't. Your secret is safe."

"You have to promise," Clark says, because he gets hung up on things. He sounds afraid. Anyway, his voice is shaking.

"I promise I won't tell anyone," Lex says. Clark should go, so Lex doesn't have to spend any more energy being in one piece.

"I'm going to tell my parents—" Lex is almost afraid too, for a second. "—the wedding is off. I—hope I see you later."

Lex doesn't answer. He thinks, _I don't know why_. A second later, when he opens his eyes and looks around the desk, Clark is already gone. The whole mansion sounds empty. The door to Lex's private study is left ajar.


End file.
